Bayou Moon - Andrews, Ilona [142]
“When I was thirteen, I killed my first opponent. When I turned sixteen, I graduated from Hawk’s and the signature on my graduation papers served as enrollment into the Red Legion. I was not given a choice about joining, but if I had been, I would have chosen the military anyway. I am a killer.”
He was tired of talking, but he had to get all of it out. The memories pressed on him like a crushing weight he couldn’t drop.
“I told you I was court-martialed. I have nothing, Cerise. No land, no money, no status, no honor. I’m not normal. Being a changeling is not a disease. I will never get better. I will always be fucked-up and my children will likely be puppies. You need to tell me if you really want this. You and me. I must know. No games, no hints, no flirting. Because if you are doing this so I will fight for your family tomorrow, don’t worry. I will anyway. If you don’t really want me, I’ll fight and then I’ll leave, and you won’t hear from me again.”
William stopped. He’d fought in hundreds of skirmishes, he had done things that no sane man would, but he never remembered feeling that hollow at the end of it.
Cerise opened her mouth.
If she told him to leave, he would have to leave. He said he would and he had to do it.
“I love you,” she told him.
The words hung in the air between them.
She said yes. She loved him.
The chain he put on himself shattered. He lunged and caught her in a hug, brushing her hair off her neck, and kissed her, sweeping her off the floor. Her hands caressed his face.
“You should’ve said no,” he snarled. “Now it’s too late.”
“I don’t care, you stupid man,” she breathed. “I love you and I want you to love me back.”
She was his. His woman, his mate. He kissed her, eager for her taste, and she kissed him back, quickly, feverishly, like she couldn’t get enough.
Mine.
He buried his face in her neck, smelling her silky hair, licking her smooth skin. She tasted like honeyed wine, sweet and intoxicating under his tongue, and she made him drunk.
“I want you to stay with me,” she told him. “I want you to stay with me forever.”
Some part of him refused to believe it. He would never be this lucky. Fate didn’t reward him; it kicked him and knocked him down, grinding him under its heel. A terrible fear gripped him that somehow she would vanish, dissolve into thin air or die in his arms, and then he would be back in his house, awake, alone, and broken, because she was only a wishful dream.
“Will you, William? Will you stay with me?”
He gripped her to him, to keep her from disappearing. “Yes.”
She stroked his back, her slender fingers tracing the contours of his muscles, soothing, inviting him. She kissed his mouth, her soft lips pressing against his. Her pink tongue darted out, and she licked him, stroking him, again and again. He kissed her hard, trying to shut down the annoying warnings in his head, and dropped them down onto the hay. She squirmed under him, warm, flexible, and pliant.
Excitement flooded him. He pulled her shirt off and kissed her breast, sucking on her pink nipple, stroking her soft stomach and down, lower, to the sweet spot between her legs. She purred. He would kill to hear her make that sound again.
She was his mate. It finally sank in. She said yes, she was his, she wanted him to stay, and if she vanished, he would spent the rest of his life looking for her and he would find her again.
She wrapped her hand around his shaft and slid it up and down, spiking the need in him into an overwhelming hunger. She was wet for him, he could smell it, and the scent was driving him out of his skin.
“I love you,” he told her.
“I love you, too,” she whispered, her velvet eyes bottomless and black.
He thrust into her and she screamed.
“ON the hay,” Cerise murmured. “We did it on the itchy, smelly hay. I can’t believe it.